people milling about with curious eyes,
the beggars scanning and calculating
the worth of passersby. Someone would
notice, ask.
But as she reached the crossing
not one person looked at her. They
were all gathered in a crowd, staring
at something that was blocked from
Ogechi's sight by the press of bodies.
After watching a woman try and fail
to haul herself onto the
low-hanging roof of a
nearby building for a bet-
ter view, Ogechi pulled her-
self up in one, albeit la-
bored, move. Mud girls were
good for something. She
ignored the woman stretch-
ing her arm out for assis-
tance and stood up to see
what had drawn the crowd.
A girl stood with her mother, and
though Ogechi could not hear them
from where she perched, the stance,
the working of their mouths---all was
familiar. They were revealing a child
in public? In the middle of the day?
Even a girl like her knew how terribly
vulgar this was. It was no wonder the
crowd had gathered. Only a child of
some magnitude would be unwrapped
in public this way. What was this one,
gold? No, the woman and the girl were
not dressed finely enough for that.Their
clothes were no better than Ogechi's.
The child startled Ogechi when it
moved. What she'd thought an obscene
ru e on the front of the girl's dress
was in fact the baby, no more than in-
terlocking twigs and sticks---was that
grass?---bound with old cloth. Scraps.
A rubbish baby. It cried, the friction of
sound so frantic and dry Ogechi imag-
ined a fire flickering from the child's
mouth. A hiccup interrupted the noise,
and when it resumed it was a human
cry. The girl's mother laughed and
danced, and the girl just cried, press-
ing the baby to her breast. They un-
covered the child together, shucking a
thick skin of cloth and sticks, and Oge-
chi leaned as far as she could without
falling from the roof to see what special
attribute might have required a public
showing.
The crowd was as disappointed as
she was. It was just an ordinary child
with an ordinary face. They started to
disperse, some throwing insults at the
two mothers and the baby they held
between them for wasting everybody's
time. Others congratulated them with
enthusiasm---it was a baby, after all.
Something didn't add up, though, and
Ogechi was reluctant to leave until she
understood what nagged her about
the scene.
It was the new mother's face. The
child was as plain as pap, but the moth-
er's face was full of won-
der. One would think the
baby had been spun from
silk. One would think the
baby was speckled with
diamonds. One would
think the baby was loved.
Mother cradled mother,
who cradled child, a tan-
gle of ordinary limbs of
ordinary women.
There has to be more than this for
me, Ogechi thought.
At the shop, the two young assis-
tants prepped their stations and
rolled their eyes at the sight of Oge-
chi and the live child strapped to her
back. Custom forced politeness from
them, and with gritted teeth they
sang:
Welcome to the new mother
I am welcomed
Welcome to the new child
The child is welcomed
May her days be longer than the breasts
of an old mother and fuller than the stomach
of a rich man.
The second the words were out, they
went back to work, as though the song
were a sneeze, to be excused and for-
gotten. Until, that is, they took in Oge-
chi's self-satisfied air, so di erent from
the anxiousness that had followed in
her wake whenever she had blessed
a child in the past. The two girls were
forced into deference, stepping aside
as Ogechi swept where they would have
stood still a mere day ago. When Mama
walked in, she paused, sensing the shift
of power in the room, but it was noth-
ing to her. She was still the head. What
matter if one toenail argued with the
other? She eyed the bundle on Oge-
chi's back but didn't look closer and
wouldn't, as long as the child didn't in-
terfere with the work and, by exten-
sion, her coin.
Ogechi was grateful for the child's
silence, even though the suction on her
neck built up over the day to become
an unrelenting ache. She tired easily,
as if the child were drawing energy
from her. Whenever she tried to ease a
finger between her nape and the child's
mouth, the sucking would quicken, so
she learned to leave it alone. At the
end of the day, Mama stopped her with
a hand on her shoulder.
"So you are happy with this one."
"Yes, Mama."
"Can I have a bit of that happiness?"
Ogechi knew better than to deny
her outright.
"What can I have in exchange?"
Mama laughed and let her go.
When Ogechi dislodged the child
at the end of the day, she found a raw,
weeping patch on her nape, where
the child had sucked her bald. On the
ride home, she slipped to the back of
the bus, careful to cradle the child's
face against her ear so that no one
could see it. The baby immediately
latched on to her sideburn, and Oge-
chi spent the journey like that, the
baby sucking an ache into her head.
At home, she sheared o a small patch
of hair and fed the child, who took
the cottony clumps like a sponge ab-
sorbing water.Then it slept, and Oge-
chi slept, too.
If Mama wondered at Ogechi's sud-
den ambition, she said nothing.
Ogechi volunteered to trim ends. She
volunteered to unclog the sink. She
kept the store so clean a rumor started
that the building was to be sold. She
discovered that the child disliked fake
hair and would spit it out. Dirty hair
was best, flavored with the person from
whose head it had fallen. Ogechi man-
aged a steady stream of food for the
baby, but it required more and more
as each day passed. All the hair she
gathered at work would be gone by
the next morning, and Ogechi had no
choice but to strap the child to her
back and allow it to chaw on her dwin-
dling nape.
Mama was not curious about the
baby, but the two assistants were. When
Ogechi denied their request for a view-
ing, their sudden deference returned
to malice tenfold. They made extra
messes, strewing hair after Ogechi had
cleaned, knocking bottles of shampoo
68
THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 26, 2015